in the vatican. >>> and a hero who confronted a killer and was shot more than a dozen times, helping the case on guns, share iing a story exclusively with cnn. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer, you're in "the situation room". >> the pentagon's top brass sounding alarm bells over automatic spending cuts now only weeks away. the defense budget will take a significant hit, $46 billion slashed, unless the president and the congress reach some sort of last minute deal. that could affect america's security and hundreds of thousands of jobs. let's go to the pentagon, our correspondent, chris lawrence, is standing by there. very worried over there at the pentagon, aren't they? >> reporter: are, wolf, and you're already starting to see some of the effects of the possible sequestration, the u.s. navy, cancelling the deployment of some other ships, cancelling some maintenance and pushing back some of the civilian contracts that they had signed. they say this is really just the tip of the iceberg, and down the road you could see a reduction in per
